Vet ex­penses

I ama long re­tired and have a cat which re­cently de­vel­oped a mild eye in­fec­tion. I took it to a vet who ex­am­ined the eye for no more than 10 min­utes, and then gave me eye drops to use on the af­fected eye. When I went to pay I was told it was $108! Cer­tainly, I have a gold card, but when I visit the doc­tor for an eye in­fec­tion I am charged $21 and given a pre­scrip­tion which costs $5. So that’s a to­tal of $26. Even if you don’t have a gold card the visit to the doc­tors is go­ing to be around $50.

So how can vets jus­tify such ex­or­bi­tant prices? Should I take my cat to my GP in fu­ture? Or per­haps should I rough up my eye a bit, get a pre­scrip­tion for my­self, and then use it on my cat? Sadly, there must be many pets out there suf­fer­ing be­cause the own­ers can­not af­ford a vet.